GIF creator receives honor, still chafes at mispronunciation

If you've ever wondered who to thank (or blame) for those 8-bit animated graphics that have managed to remain relevant even on today's high-bandwidth Internet, Steve Wilhite is your man. Working at CompuServe in 1987, Wilhite used his knowledge of compression technologies to create the GIF format that allowed for color graphics to be used efficiently in the days of dial-up Internet access. Wilhite received a lifetime achievement award at this year's Webby Awards and took the oportunity to once again remind us how 'GIF' should be pronounced.

In an interview with the New York Times, Wilhite says, 'It is a soft "G", pronounced "jif". End of story.' You can see Wilhite's GIF-enabled Webby Award acceptance 'speech' (introduced by Tumblr's David Karp) on YouTube.

Comments

Funny how everyone insists that GIF must be pronounced with a hard G because the G stands for graphics and some supposed rule about acronym pronunciation. If said rule was true, wouldn't MOMA be pronounced "mumma", and ROM be pronounced "rome"?AIDS would be pronounced "uh-ids".SCUBA would be pronounced "skuh-bah" as in scuttle and bat.LASER wouldn't have a Z sound in it.UNICEF wouldn't have an S sound in it.I could go on but I think I've made my point.

While a number of comments are truly funny, here's a problem: In my native language, the word GIF is pronounced the way its author intended it: JIF, as in Jimmy. In fact, the sound is identical with the one in JPG - again in Romanian. This is more or less common place for all Latin languages. Besides having part of the world on the author's side, when you're laughing at the guy, think how you Anglo-Saxons pronounce "Gymnastics".

Some very mean spirited people here. I love to hear about the otherwise unsung creators of technology - they are my heroes. The soft sounding G in an acronym or abbreviation is a stretch however; no one says, " Jrafics". It would be hoot if we we just found out we are supposed to be pronouncing it, "yay-peg" or "gay-peg"! There are a lot of tiffs on this site. Where's my OED?

There was a huge tempest in a teapot a few years back due to the assertion, then, that it could not. Ten rich guys and their lawyers cared, everyone else didn't even notice and the world went on. The horse had left the stable at that point so legality aside, the claim was moot (pronounced ghoti).

Graphics Interchange Format is abbreviated to GIF, which is also an acronym.The purpose of abbreviations and acronyms is, inter alia, to promote efficiency in referring to concepts, but the general rule is that the sound of the letters in said abbreviation goes back to the words compiling the concept.

As much as the world is grateful for the GIF file, it is not Wilhite's (pronounced Jones) place to redefine pronunciation. His Jif-pronunciation messes with the efficiency of the acronym.

Exactly. I've run into this sort of thing before with engineers and how they pronounce their inventions. It makes me grin inside and wonder if it's an intentional cheekiness towards their English major classmates?

Interesting fight here-- which should take precedence, the creator's intent or the common usage?

In other words, a question for each side to consider:None of you invented the English language, nor is the originator of this particular word available for comment. So... is the 13th element (which is spelled aluminium) pronounced "uh-loo-mih-nuhm" or "al-you-mih-nee-uhm"? =)

Just because you invent or discover something, you cannot expect to name it as well. Anyone who discovered an element knows that. There are committees who must preside over these important things! :-P Most people can't even pronounce things that are well defined, mostly because they cannot pronounce anything period.

Does anyone even use GIF for useful stuff? The only thing I see it used for these days is animated icons.

What P*SSES ME OFF here are the Mo**ons who are trying to tell the CREATOR that he is wrong, what do you plan to do NEXT? Tell Subaru how to say "impreza" or claim Einstein to be wrong? I would LOVE to see you debate it in the same "quality" debate you have here which is "its gif not jif, why? because i said so"

No, no it is not. You are NOT the inventor nor do you write the dictionary, in fact let's debate ALL The words in the dictionary and B*itch and moan about them as well. Let's go against an ENTIRE language just because we don't think the CREATORS of said Language are right.

It's not a word, it's an acronym. And since the first word of that acronym has a hard G, so does the acronym. Do you pronounce scuba skooba, sooba, or shuba? Everyone I've heard calls it skooba, because the sc combination is not formed from normal usage, but from self contained. It really doesn't matter how he wants to pronounce GIF, he can't change the rules of English.

Congratulations Mr. Wilhite— good job at a time of need. That said, just because you figured out my least favorite form of compression next to MP3, doesn't mean you have the sense that God gave a bug when figuring out how to pronounce an acronym.

You need to be very careful making statements like this because it is quite possible that he was wrong. It was just a theory after all, and there are already plenty of exceptions.

It fits what we understand now simply because we do not know any better. For the longest time people branded Boltzmann as an Irreligious Materialist for believing in Atoms. At one time everyone knew the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. So . . . . .

Actually . . . it's all a well crafted marketing ploy to make sure everyone remembers GIF! Well played in deed! Now we just need a crafty way to remember that there is an extra IL in W_hite to remember his name! <grin>

"Computer Industry" news now, on this photo site? what's up with that?

I've been in computers since the mid eighties, and I've never heard it called a jif either. gift, gif... should be a hard g I would think. now if I pronounce it correctly from today onwards, everyone will be correcting me all the time. now that doesn't sound like much fun! I'd much rather continue to upset it's creator whom I've never met.

Interesting to me is the proportion of people who say that they have never heard it pronounced with a hard G. I've never heard it pronounced with a SOFT G. FWIW (possibly little :-) ) I've been using computers actively for almost 40 years. "Down here" in New Zealand we speak "The Queen's English" [tm] and British English is, I'm assured by experts, slowly morphing to follow our lead :-).

Sorry, but he doesn't get to dictate the pronunciation just because he created the file type. Standard pronunciation rules apply. Insofar as the G in GIF is for "graphics", which has a hard G, then GIF should likewise be pronounced with a hard G.

Gary is not pronounced the same as Jerry, even if Geoff is pronounced like Jeff. English is inconsistent like that.

Anyway, it seems natural for most people to assume that GIF uses a hard-G. Although I can't say that I really care how it's pronounced, it's not as if people are nutty for picking one way over the other. (Nutty? No pun intended in comparison to Jif brand peanut butter.)

Seems ironic that someone who invents a compression technology must then use a lengthy (expanded) explanation of how to pronounce it ;-)From Wiki it would also appear that JIF is an alternative filename extension for JPEG compression - just to confuse the issue.

Luckily, mr. Wilh-I-Te has no jurisdiction outside the anglophone countries.

Besides I thought the RULE in English, was that three-letter acronyms (TLA) were spelled out (U-S-A, U-S-A!), and only once the abbreviations hit four letters or more are you to try to pronounce them as a word?

I don't care if he invented the GIF... "JIF" still sounds wrong. Is the 'G' sound in "Graphic Interchange Format" a soft 'G'? No! You don't say "Jiraphic Interchange format," so why would you say "JIF?"

I think Mr. Wilhite has a sadistic, yet patient, tendency. He waits 25 years to settle the debate, only to say that the least logical option is the correct one. Grrr

I've been pronouncing it with a hard G since BBS days. I'm not the only one. Usually when I hear someone say "jif" it's a nerd who gets humiliated right quick.

I did at one point learn that a soft G was technically correct, but after trying to pronounce it like that and realizing that nobody knew what I was saying, I went back to the hard G and never looked back.

btw... how many folks say hard G for Gigabyte [GB] now, after hearing the 'professor' on 'Back to the Future' saying it with the soft G 'J' as in Jigabyte?

in the case of Giga, it IS A WORD (prefix) Giga, thus the 'i' that follows a G typically is SOFT... BUT GIF is NOT a WORD, but rather an ACRONYM, thus it's no surprise the G is hard, as it is the acronym letter taking after G in GRAPHIC...